Email and webmail statistics

Those preparing introductory presentations on email often need background statistics on email usage and the popularity of different webmail services. The following compilation of numbers and anecdotal evidence offers some help...

Webmail users

There are no uniform statistics comparing the user numbers of the different web-based email address providers. Nevertheless, there is enough information available to make some statements about the popularity of different services.

The big three are Microsoft's Hotmail (now called Windows Live Hotmail), Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, together accounting for well over 1 billion users.

For a long time, Hotmail led Yahoo, with Gmail a distant third. But recent numbers suggest Gmail has caught up with (and possibly overtaken) its two rivals.

The details...

Gmail:

Comscore estimated just under 288 million unique vsitors to Gmail in October 2012.

In a June 2012 blog post, Google revealed Gmail now has 425 million active users globally. It is not clear how many of them are through Android sign-ups, rather than active email users.

In January 2012, Google claimed 350 million active users during an earnings call.

Research from Return Path suggested Gmail ended 2010 with some 193 million users.

Hotmail:

Note that Microsoft recently announced Outlook.com, which seems set to be their "webmail" service of the future.

The October 2012 Comscore numbers (see above for link) put Hotmail's unique visitors for the month at some 286 million.

A July 2011 post on the official Microsoft blog claimed Hotmail served 360 million unique users a month.

According to August 2011 statistics cited by Yahoo! (see the About page here), Hotmail is the biggest webmail provider with over 330 million unique users.

The latest Factsheet (albeit September 2010) from Microsoft notes that "Windows Live Hotmail is one of the world's largest e-mail providers with more than 355 million active accounts".

In March, 2010, a Group Program Manager at Windows Live Hotmail wrote that the service had over 369 million active users.

Yahoo! Mail:

The October 2012 Comscore numbers (see above) estimated Yahoo! Mail had around 282 million unique visitors.

In August 2011, Yahoo! reported independent statistics giving it 302 million unique users globally and double the number of Gmail users in the US market (see the About page here).

In a May 2010 interview, Yahoo! Mail's Carlo Catajan mentions 275+ million users.

Email service provider MailChimp publishes the total number of emails they send to each of the major email address providers. The results for July 2011 saw Hotmail and Gmail addresses as the most "popular" in mailing lists, closely followed by Yahoo! Mail, with AOL way behind.

Data from competitive intelligence service Hitwise from June 2012 indicates the most popular email websites (based on US Internet usage) were Gmail followed by Yahoo! Mail (see current rankings.)

Interestingly, the data also suggests that email is a far more important part of the Yahoo empire than Google's. The mail-related domain is the most popular at the Yahoo portal, while Gmail accounts for a small proportion of visits to Google.

Webmail providers like Gmail and Microsoft may also be behind some other domain names, either through POP3 retrieval of email from other accounts or through email hosting services offered to businesses and organizations which retain the latter's domains.

Historical account numbers

In October 2009, email service provider MailChimp analysed the mails sent out by its many clients and found Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail fighting it out for the most popular email address provider, followed by Gmail, then AOL.

In July 2009, Comscore reported on unique user traffic for the US only to the big four email domains. Yahoo! Mail attracted 106 million unique US users, Windows Live Hotmail 47 million, Gmail 37 million and AOL Mail 36.4 million.

In February, 2008, a Yahoo executive claimed the company served 260 million email users.

In October, 2007, an official Yahoo! blog cited statistics suggesting Yahoo represented 255 million of the world's 543 million webmail accounts.

In a February 2007 company blog, a Senior Product Manager noted that Hotmail had "260+ million existing customers" and a news report from April 2007 states, "Hotmail provides more than 280 million e-mail accounts, 20 million of which are Windows Live Hotmail."

Writing in August, 2007, Microsoft blogger Omar Shahine noted that "...on Windows Live Hotmail we are hosting about 200 million accounts."

A February, 2007 article in TechCrunch gave user numbers for Yahoo! Mail (250 million), Hotmail (228 million) and Gmail (51 million), but did not cite the source of the numbers.

General email usage

There are numerous estimates of typical email use and email traffic from various sources. Here just a few for you: